


Waiting

by felixiomarshall



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22757131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felixiomarshall/pseuds/felixiomarshall
Summary: Words are important, as are their meanings, and The Master is the kinda guy who knows what a lot of different words really mean.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	Waiting

He had a lot of free time. Free. That was one of the worst kind of words- one that fluttered round, just out of reach, until it decided it was time to sink it’s teeth into your throat, laughing. Freedom is, and has always been, poorly advertised. No-one can ever be free. Well they can, but when they get there it’s always so much worse than they thought.

The lights in his TARDIS hummed softer than usual, as a clear attempt to calm him down. The Master sighed.   
“You’re right, YES I’m annoyed. But you still haven’t learnt, have you?” his nose scrunched up in disgust “‘Annoyed’ is good, ‘annoyed’ is productive, ‘ANNOYED’ gets us places!” he slammed his fist down on his desk every time he said ‘annoyed’, face turning sourer with each desk-slam.

He had a plan to conduct. Plan. A beautiful word, one which can be frustrating to say at first- when you repeat it again and again in frustration- but gets smoother and easier with time. It has soft sounds, nice sounds, with an “a” that isn’t sharp, but is calm and placid. Sometimes he would ever-so-slowly slip his tongue round each sound in the word: “Puh-luh-a-nuh”.

“There! A nice cup of tea!” He let himself fall into his chair, whistling merrily. “Did you know The Doctor has like…” he waved his arms vaguely “…a million sugars in his tea? He’ll regenerate of diabetes next!” he laughed loudly at himself, before quickly calming down and picking up his drink. Eyes closed, he took a deep sip. The TARDIS had nice, bright lights, that weren’t glaringly bright but more… joyful. “You can sense it too!” he cried out “the start of something brilliant, the start of the end for our dearest little Doctor.”  
The TARDIS didn’t reply. It never would.

He had just been fired. Fired. Normally a word of dread, sometimes one of freedom. But we’ve already looked at freedom. Anyway, ‘fired’. A strange word, one that boarders on two syllables, but could just be one-and-a-half. It was a word that could charge the fury of millions, or could leave you feeling completely numb. 

His fingers tapped out a little tune. At first it had no particular rhythm or pattern but, inevitably, it turned into two pairs of two quick raps on his desk. It echoed loudly- there were no other sounds in the TARDIS, aside from the usual hum of the lights.  
“Well what do you think I should do?” he didn’t stop tapping. “Because it’s not like the plan’s stopped, I mean,” he stopped, shrugging “we’re still good to go, nothing’s changed…” he was unusually quiet. Everything, at that moment, was quiet. Well aside from-  
“Can you STOP with the humming?” he snapped. The TARDIS did so. “Thank you.” He nodded.

He had collected a large amount of papers. Collected. A word of obsession, wanting, needing… the word itself starts well enough, with a sharp sound in the middle that wakes you up to reality. Because a word like that can sound lovely until it piles up around you, reminding you that it’s nearly time to take action.

Not long now. He placed a recent folder he’d procured onto one of the piles of information.   
“There. This is gonna be amazing, right?” he smiled, but not manically (or even confidently) this time. If someone had been there with him, they might have said he looked nervous. But no one was, so no one could dare say that he did. “I mean…” he chuckled, reaching his arms out in front of him “now’s the time! No time like today, folks!” he spun round on his wheelie chair, launching himself across the room. It slowed down very quickly; he’d almost been expecting it to spin for a lot longer. It didn’t.

He had been left alone. Left. Left is one of the only seventy-five words in the English language which can be classed as a contronym- a word with two opposite meanings. And isn’t that fitting? Being left? Brilliant! Terrible! Terrifying! Wonderful!

He’d figure it out.

He always did.


End file.
